


Fantasie

by roseandheather



Series: Bittersweet And Strange [15]
Category: Inspector Lynley Mysteries (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-21
Updated: 2012-08-21
Packaged: 2017-11-12 14:15:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/492083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roseandheather/pseuds/roseandheather
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Music is the language of love. And this is how he loves her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fantasie

The first thing she hears is the music.

The notes float down the hallway, delicate, almost dancing. She knows the tune, but can’t place the name. It doesn’t matter, anyway, because when she rounds the corner she sees him sitting at the baby grand piano she’d never really paid much attention to, fingers flying over the keys with the practised skill of someone who’s been playing since before he knew how to walk.

She is paying attention now.

He’s bent over the keyboard, and though music is open on the stand his eyes are closed, his face a study in pure passion that knocks the breath right out of her. She doesn’t know much about music, or pianos, but even she can recognise the sound of someone playing from the heart, not the head.

He is playing from the heart, and from the soul.

She’s never seen him this way before, utterly lost in something far beyond himself. He is speaking through the music with a piece so long memorised he no longer has to think about what fingers go where, how long to hold a note or when to press and release the pedals. Instead the piano is an extension of himself, a way to give voice to feelings he cannot otherwise express, even to her.

In that instant his eyes fly open and he looks straight at her, and the naked passion in his eyes is too much for her to bear.

“Stay,” he pleads, never stopping the music, and she does, suddenly aware that she’d been about to flee from feelings still almost too new to face. “Let me,” he says, closing his eyes as though finding words is a struggle, “let me show you. All right?”

Spellbound, she nods. And the music changes.

The melody that floats toward her now is tender, sweet, even delicate, but a heavier bass line gives the descant an undeniable strength.  One moment peaceful and slow, the next a storm of defiant staccato, the notes change quicksilver, fire and honey in the space of a breath, bittersweet and achingly poignant with traces of fragile hope and yearning over a deep, abiding sorrow, and underneath it all that undeniable strength that never overshadows, but always supports. Then a new theme joins the song, one she recognises instantly as the man in front of her; thunder and lightning, dark passion and powerful drive, deep lingering pain, and the fierce joy in justice and goodness that has always been his hallmark.

The theme she has come to identify as hers has shifted now, a variation that is lighter, more hopeful, and some of the darkness floats out of his melody, too. The song still aches, still swirls with sorrow and yearning, but it is a sweeter ache for all of that. The two themes twine together and change each other, speaking more of hope, of joy, of growing strength, of passion and trust that morph into something far more profound.

The melody changes one last time, the two separate themes now one. She can still hear his theme, and hers, winding through the melody line, but they have combined to create a theme that is both entirely new and a variation on what has come before. Bittersweet sorrow and the pain of wounds never quite healed still swirl through the melody, but soaring over it all is an aching, abiding love, sometimes painful but always, always healing.

“Dear God,” she whispers at last, utterly helpless under the spell he has woven, “is that how you see me? Is that what I am to you?”

“Yes,” he answers her, low and sweet. “Yes. And what we are to each other, Barbara Lynne.”

When her hands fly to her cheeks, she’s startled to realise her eyes are damp with tears.

She doesn’t need to ask if he composed this himself. The answer is all over his face, blazing in his eyes. This is how he loves her, enough to compose a sonata, a fantasia, and she wishes fiercely she could do the same, because he deserves symphonies and cantatas and Handel’s _Messiah,_ but she cannot give him orchestras and oratorios, only the song of her heart and his.

“Take me to bed,” she manages hoarsely, trembling, raw with wanting him, with loving him. “Now.”

Rising, he takes her hand, and does.

**Author's Note:**

> The music Lynley is playing at the beginning is Beethoven's Für Elise, possibly the most famous work of classical music ever written.


End file.
